We have a big problem—based on this article, most immigrating to the U.S. do not hold conservative values. “The 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey found that 62 percent of immigrants prefer a single, government-run health-care system. The 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that 69 percent of immigrants support Obamacare. Pew also found that 53 percent of Hispanics have a negative view of capitalism, the highest of any group surveyed. This is even higher than the 47 percent among self-identified supporters of Occupy Wall Street. The Pew Research Center has also found that 75 percent of Hispanics prefer a “bigger government providing more services,” and only 19 percent prefer a smaller government. Pew also reported that 55 percent of Asians prefer “bigger government providing more services,” and only 36 percent prefer a smaller government. So it’s no surprise that in 2012, 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians voted for Obama. Even Republican emphasis on patriotism and national sovereignty is likely to alienate many immigrants. A Harris poll found that 81 percent of native-born Americans believe our schools should teach students to be proud of being American, compared with only 50 percent of immigrants who had become naturalized U.S. citizens. Only 37 percent of naturalized citizens (compared with 67 percent of native-born citizens) think our Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law.” The Liberal Newcomers

Messaging

“This is an irrational administration, however, mired in the clichés and received truths of its most ardent true believers. The House GOP would do better to spend more time talking about energy than immigration, just as it should focus on Obamacare and not on cutting the COLA for the career military. Really, how hard is it to set up the 2014 elections in the right way?” The Keystone Cops

“It seems that Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), in her official Republican response, took a page from the playbook — as the Washington Post reported, “mixing plain-spoken platitudes with tenderly told stories about her children and her blue-collar roots.” Walter feels that Republicans need to empower women, since many have the same priorities and issues as male voters. “We need to point out that the way the Democrats speak to women is patronizing. Women’s issues are not limited to their reproductive issues. Republicans should not water down where they stand on the social issues, but they can echo their belief in a respectful, thoughtful, and empathetic way. With that said, those running for office should be asking women voters, what is the most important issue facing them today, and who is best suited to help solve that issue?” How to Win in 2014

Education

School choice is the only answer! “There is a human tragedy smoldering in America’s inner cities. Twelve million poor children, mainly black and Hispanic, are trapped in failing government schools that are teaching them nothing. As a result, they will never get a chance at a middle-class life. Virtually every school board and every administration in inner city districts is controlled by Democrats, and has been for over fifty years. Everything that is wrong with inner city schools that policy can fix, Democrats are responsible for.” Atrocity

Elections

We shouldn’t look like haters. “Readers of this site know that I’m of a different view, that the leaders of the GOP and the conservative movement, while leveling very tough criticisms at the president, also need to carry themselves with a degree of grace and winsomeness. They need to be less agitated and more agreeable, in possession of strong convictions and moderate temperaments. They need to demonstrate a genuine interest in justice and those living in the shadows of society. And they need to propose far-reaching conservative reforms that constitute an actual governing vision, one that matches the challenges of this moment.” Both Obama and the GOP Badly Damaged

“Word of Waxman’s retirement came just a day after fellow leftist George Miller — who was also first elected in 1974 and served a Methuselah-like 20 terms in the House — called it quits. The growing number of prominent Democratic retirees prompted Nancy Pelosi on Friday to deny that she, too, would join them. Still, it’s clear that Democrats see the writing on the wall. “It’s been frustrating,” Waxman explained, “because of the extremism of Tea Party Republicans.” Translation: Americans have caught on to the Democrats’ incompetence and are going to elect Republicans in November — including Tea Party types. With unchallenged power for two years after Obama was elected, Democrats wrecked the economy, crippled the banking system, destroyed millions of high-paying jobs and nationalized the health care system against the people’s will. Now the bill is coming due. Eleven Democrats are reportedly retiring or seriously thinking about it. Thanks mainly to those “extreme” Tea Partyers, that number is likely to rise. The GOP would do well to remember that.” Waxman Retirement A Sign Of The Times For Troubled Dems

“Over time, more and more families will come to feel the pinch of big government’s blade against their throats. When friends, neighbors and coworkers are ready to listen, this is what they’ll need to hear: since each person’s well-being is to an enormous extent affected by prevailing social and economic conditions, since, in a countless variety of ways, those conditions are the product of a nation’s political enactments, and since here, in America, we freely elect the men who write the laws, which create the conditions in which we all prosper or perish, each citizen needs to be informed about the political programs that are being proposed and implemented in his name and make his voice and vote felt.” Let’s Hear It for The Low Information Voter

“On almost every contemporary issue there is a populist, middle-class argument to be made against elite liberalism. Yet the Republican class in charge seems ossified in its inability to make a counter-argument for the middle class. Never has the liberal agenda been so vulnerable, a logical development when bad ideas have had five years to prove themselves as very bad ideas. When Obama is all done he will have taken high presidential popularity ratings, a supermajority in the Senate, and a large margin in the House and lost them all — if only the Republicans can make an adequate case that they represent the middle class, the Democrats only the very wealthy and the very dependent.” A Beat-up, Exhausted, and Terrified Republican Establishment

President Obama

“Yet at no point in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which lists the powers of Congress, nor any other part of the nation’s founding document, does it say that the legislature has a responsibility to “give a raise” to the citizenry. Earning more money is something to be voluntarily negotiated between a worker and employer, not something granted by an all-powerful, benevolent government. For decades, liberals have wanted the government to play an increasingly paternalistic role in people’s lives and Obama’s new favorite line makes it sound as if Washington is everybody’s boss. It’s an outgrowth of a political culture in which politicians sound like candidates for student government, competing to see who can grant more to the electorate by making increasingly absurd claims. As is always the case with liberals, Obama is defining compassion as a willingness to dictate how others should allocate money. If conservatives don’t support the federal government forcing businesses to pay a certain wage, regardless of the effect on employment, they are portrayed as being unsympathetic to low-income families.” Dinesh D’Souza was Right about Obama

“But as he moved along I started to think, what we are hearing is an admission of failure. We are five years into the recession. The nation has recovered on two-thirds of the jobs lost in the downturn. According to the Associated Press story that ran on the morning of the Mr. Obama’s address to Congress, for the first time ever, a majority of Americans receiving food stamps are of working age.” A Sunday Look Back At SOTU By Clark Judge

“The reason this will backfire is that imperial presidencies only impress the loyal base of the President’s party, who mistake autocracy for wisdom. They tend to worry and frighten everyone else, especially when the result is the unmistakable incompetence of this administration on both domestic and foreign policy. Expect the backlash on all of these points this year.” Will Obama’s pursuit of executive power backfire?

Big Government

Do these people take responsibility for anything? “The systemic problem is the fact that big-government regimes like ObamaCare won’t work because central planning of large economies never work, for reasons laid out by economist F. A. Hayek decades ago in The Road to Serfdom. History has only proven Hayek correct over and over again, while utopians keep insisting that the problem is just the people involved in its implementation. And Hayek predicts why incompetents and bullies end up at the top of those systems, too. Maybe Stewart should read it. It’s far too late for Pelosi.” Pelosi: ObamaCare incompetence “not my responsibility”

Standing up to the government, and winning! “After spending nearly two and half million dollars in legal fees and paying a $300,000 fine, the government has settled with Gibson and has finally returned the confiscated tonewood. Normally that would be the end of the story, with a victory scored for partisan government bullying of political opponents, however, that is not the end. Gibson took that wood and made it into the Government Series II Les Paul. These special edition guitars are hot stamped in gold with the Government Series graphic, which is an American bald eagle holding a Gibson guitar neck. It is an admirable statement of defiance of an abusive government and a refusal of a historic American company to be intimidated.” What Gibson Guitars Did with the Wood the Government Returned

“Of course, today’s Democratic party will offer nothing of the sort. Founded by Jackson as a coalition deeply suspicious of government, it evolved over a century ago into the party advocating the use of big government to solve problems. Today, it is now merely the party of government—and not just any government, but one whose constitutional framework has been twisted to concentrate wealth and power upon itself and its clients. Jackson’s party has come to represent everything that Jackson himself once opposed.” A Real Equality Agenda: Let’s redistribute power, not income

“The systemic problem is the fact that big-government regimes like ObamaCare won’t work because central planning of large economies never work, for reasons laid out by economist F. A. Hayek decades ago in The Road to Serfdom. History has only proven Hayek correct over and over again, while utopians keep insisting that the problem is just the people involved in its implementation. And Hayek predicts why incompetents and bullies end up at the top of those systems, too. Maybe Stewart should read it. It’s far too late for Pelosi.” Pelosi: ObamaCare incompetence “not my responsibility”

As we suspected. “Most of my co-workers found humor in the I.O. room on a cruder level. Just as the long-suffering American public waiting on those security lines suspected, jokes about the passengers ran rampant among my TSA colleagues: Many of the images we gawked at were of overweight people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display. Piercings of every kind were visible. Women who’d had mastectomies were easy to discern—their chests showed up on our screens as dull, pixelated regions. Hernias appeared as bulging, blistery growths in the crotch area. Passengers were often caught off-guard by the X-Ray scan and so materialized on-screen in ridiculous, blurred poses—mouths agape, à la Edvard Munch. One of us in the I.O. room would occasionally identify a passenger as female, only to have the officers out on the checkpoint floor radio back that it was actually a man. All the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels.” Former insider says they’re on the lookout for hot women and hassling people.

“When I first read that Alan Dershowitz had said the charges against Dinesh D’Souza are most likely a case of selective politically motivated prosecution, I was surprised. But I wondered about the strict accuracy of the report, since the source was Newsmax. But now we have some WSJ corroboration, so I think we can safely assume that Dershowitz is indeed defending – although not in any official capacity as a defense attorney – D’Souza.” D’Souza gets a defender

“Detroit represents nothing less than progressivism in its final stage of decadence: Worried that unionized public-sector workers are looting your city? Detroit is already bankrupt, unable to provide basic services expected of it — half the streetlights don’t work, transit has been reduced, neighborhoods go unpatrolled. Worried that public-sector unions are ruining your schools? Detroit’s were ruined a generation or more ago, the results of which are everywhere to be seen in the city. Worried that Obamacare is going to ruin our health-care markets? General-practice physicians are hard to find in Detroit, and those willing to accept Medicaid — which covers a great swath of Detroit’s population — are rarer still. Worried about the permissive culture? Four out of five of Detroit’s children are born out of wedlock. Worried that government is making it difficult for businesses to thrive? Many people in Detroit have to travel miles to find a grocery store. This is the endgame of welfare economics: What good is Medicaid if there are no doctors? What good are food stamps where there is no food? What good are “free” schools if you’re so afraid to send your children there that you feel it prudent to arm them first?” Progressivism Kills

“The Obama administration and its progressive soldiers seem to know no bounds when it comes to seeking political advantage by limiting speech. The Wall Street Journal put it well: “The Obama administration is moving to rein in the influence of tax-exempt groups in elections by creating rules to restrict their spending on a wide range of campaign-related activities.” Don’t Be Bullied By Obama Admin Attack on 501c-4s

“Everyone in the House Chamber knew something that the American people have yet to fully grasp and Republicans have yet to demonstrate an ability to combat – that their government has grown so large, so complex, so involved in virtually every aspect of their lives, that it is now being used as a weapon to by a small segment of the ruling political class. The weaponization of government is happening and it’s time Americans took notice. For all the folks – primarily on the left – who screamed and yelled that the Patriot Act was shredding the Constitution, far more intrusive tactics that have nothing to do with the NSA or Homeland Security are being deployed right under our noses during this Administration. Those tactics reduce every Americans’ personal and economic freedom. There is a dangerous arrogance of power among the President and senior-level Democrats that should concern every American.” Obama’s Weaponization of Government

The Economy

“Turning 30 used to mean hitting your stride as an official adult. But for many of the country’s millennials, it feels like being stuck in perpetual late adolescence. Marriage eludes many. Children? Not anytime soon. Most millennials have some sort of job, but for many a career seems unobtainable. A home of their own? Lots of them have had to move back in with mom and dad or shack up with roommates. That’s not the place where many millennials expected or wanted to be as they enter their thirties. “We have plans that we’re working toward. It’s just so slow,” said Erika Hall Trowell, a 31-year-old living in Phoenix, who after two layoffs and a sharp pay cut figures she and her husband are at least several years behind on their goals.” Millennials hit 30: It’s the economy, not us

“Obama’s SOTU speech was emblematic of the Texas saying (coined, no doubt, for LBJ), all hat and no cattle. Every word – well, maybe not every word because AFA couldn’t watch it all the way through – was pure PR, trying to resurrect tired ideas that never could work. Ridiculous progressive rhetoric squared! One of the more preposterous of many proposals was his all new, bright and shiny MyRA plan. This is designed to be IRAs for Dummies but aimed at those making $19K a year and under. Of course, no mention of the fact that these people have the same access to standard IRAs and ROTH IRAs as anyone else, so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what this is really about. But, guessing that people in this income range have little, if any, income to save after the bills are paid. MyRAs are designed to invest ONLY in US Treasury Bonds. Yeah, that’s a great idea! Let’s invest in a country that keeps running up debt they can’t pay. This is extortion of the highest order. It puts the burden on companies to sign on to this scam, eh, scheme, to help Uncle Fingers to create yet more debt. Those bonds are being sold to foreign interests in return for a piece of America!” Obama’s Newest Scheme to Rob the POOR!

Obamacare

“You must explain this to your patients. You must tell them that they have purchased a product that was misrepresented to them and that you cannot deliver. It saddens me to think of the decreased access to care from actual physicians and the shockingly increased costs Aetna patients will now experience because of your choice to collude with big government rather than collaborate with patients and physicians.” ‘I will not comply’: Doctor slams Obamacare, sends must-read breakup letter to Aetna

“All told, I’m likely going to pay more than $6,000 more each year for my medical care. I’ve had to take a second job in order to pay for my ObamaCare plan. Given my health problems, the physical and emotional drain that this puts on me is difficult to bear. It’s also made it much more difficult for me to care for my ailing mother, who depends on me for help. For me, the impact of ObamaCare is a health plan that is both unaffordable and uncaring. For a law named “The Affordable Care Act,” this is both backward and perverse. It’s also not what you promised me when I voted for you, Mr. President. When you were on the campaign trail, you promised that ObamaCare would help me with my medical problems. You promised that people like me with pre-existing conditions would be better off. And you promised that if I liked my health-care plan, I could keep it. Mr. President, you’ve now broken all of these promises — and not just to me.” Betrayed by the President and ObamaCare

“All presidents have, at one time or another, fudged on the truth. Most politicians pad their résumés and airbrush away their sins. But what is new about political lying is the present notion that lies are not necessarily lies anymore — a reflection of the relativism that infects our entire culture.” The Poison of Postmodern Lying

“Thanks to Bill Ayers, America, “rubbed raw with sores of discontent,” is again reminded from whence our president came. As evidenced by the pandemonium his progressive policies are delivering to every corner of American politics, society, and culture, Barack Obama is still very much committed to “radical social change.” Tracing backwards from Bill Ayers to Saul Alinsky to Alinsky’s source of inspiration, Lucifer, it’s undeniable that the president still firmly believes that “the world as it is just won’t do.” And what proves it is that he is currently in the process of ‘fundamentally transforming’ America’s world into the sort of hell Saul Alinsky thought ‘it should be.’” Bill Ayers and Obama Both Quote Alinsky

“So what was it about Ayers that I found so deeply unsettling? I guess you could say it was the irrelevance of truth. Truth, or even nuance, was just some trivial stumbling block to be overcome on the way to an end. And that end has never changed, ever, not one jot, since the days of SDS. Bill Ayers is Saul Alinsky on steroids — an Alinsky beyond Alinsky, as it were. During the debate, he rarely responded directly to anything anyone asked or said, only recited a script so old it might as well have been found on some Egyptian tomb painting. But since he has done this for so long, he did it brilliantly, unwaveringly, no contradictory idea or even thought allowed to enter his brain. Victory for his cause was all.” The Devil and Bill Ayers: D’Souza Debates Ayers at Dartmouth

“D’Souza is now arguably in trouble because Obama’s people promised retribution during the president’s second term. “After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time,” Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s close, trusted adviser, has been quoted saying in reference to the 2012 election. She warned: ‘Everyone not with us is against us, and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay.’” D’Souza’s Indictment and Double Standards

We want to have lives. “3. There’s a cautionary tale in all of this, which is that the right shouldn’t become like the left. Leave the hateful attacks, the venom, and the name-calling to them. Conservatives don’t need it, we shouldn’t want it, and it’s not consistent with our best tradition. If the left wants to give refuge to the haters, then that’s up to them. The right, on the other hand, should be characterized by people who are principled, passionate, decent and who don’t (as Ronald Reagan used to remind his staff) consider our opponents to be our enemies. Some conservatives seem to make a rather good living on doing the opposite, on engaging in ad hominem and often childish attacks, and it’s discrediting to them and to the movement they claim to represent.” For Leftists, the Personal is Still the Political

We’ve got a terrific line up for our annual Christmas program. First up will be the Ignite Barbershop Quartet. Ignite began singing together after a quartet matching party in November 2015. They are all Champion members of Region 21’s Scottsdale Chorus and they will be singing for us!

After lunch, Congressional District 6 congressman, Representative David Schweikart, will talk to us about what’s happening in Washington DC, and provide us with a status of the Tax Bill working its way through the House of Representatives and Senate.

Finally, member Julia Graham will install our new 2018/2019 officers. We look forward to seeing you and be sure to bring a friend or two or three!